


[Meta] Leaf on the Long Ago Firefly

by fresne



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2002-12-30
Updated: 2002-12-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 10:01:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ancient meanderings about Firefly when it still flew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I looked behind the Cyclops eye, I did - Ariel

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes taken from each relevant Firefly episode.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off our mortal coil must give us pause.  
I don’t want to die.

Time to sleep? No Mei, mei. Time to wake up.

I so very resent the loss of the pilot. I want it next week. I want it now. I want it already past. I don’t even know what the rules for spoilers on an un-played Pilot should be. Well, from what I know based on webish spelunking after Ariel, I’m going to spoil. Ha. Fox take that.

In the pilot, River is first introduced as a girl in a box. Frozen in cryo sleep. River is frozen. What a great name. Implying the changeability of water for an infinitely changeable character. Ice water steam.

River speaks in the language of metaphor and dreams. She alludes. She glances, but no one understands. 

River slashes Jayne with a knife. He looks better in red. Slashes his shirt with its Blue Sun logo with a knife. He looks better in red, i.e. not blue. Those cans that she shredded in Shindig, I don’t have the tape, but I’d venture that they were Blue Sun products. The recurring Blue Sun drink logo that played again before the scene that revealed Jayne’s betrayal. The odd perpendicular between Jayne’s stitchable bleeding and the blue sticks that call forth blood pouring from the body.

I’m reminded of a Tanya Huff book, where one of the characters sees himself as weak because he can only command water elementals. No much use when you’re away from the water. It takes him awhile to figure out that the human body is a sack of mostly water.

I also keep thinking of the song, “Black Hole Sun, why don’t you come and wash away the rain.” Rain falling on a blue river. A mind Tempest tossed.

In this setting, I wonder who is Ariel, spirit of the air? I think Caliban is obvious in context. Does that make Simon the Magus into Prospero, who has put aside all his books and magics. Yet, medicine is a part of who he is. Shapes how he sees the world.

It’s all about perspective. Words and meaning. Appearance.

The nurse sees medics in uniform with two DOAs. The costume informs what she sees. She accepts it and sends them on without explanation or script.

When you’re floating in the cold dark of void, the lack of a ship’s part is the difference between dying cold and alone or living to the next job. On the lush central planets, Wash can pick up that same part in a dump. Smile and toss it against an abandoned transport. Don’t just think post war economy. Think Japan, where functioning appliances are thrown out to make way for newer, better, newer.

A difference in perspective. Ariel through Wash’s eyes – fun and interesting. Zoe’s Ariel – restrictive and unpleasant. Why aren’t the citizens smiling? Perhaps because the floggings will continue until moral improves.

On the Rim, a loss of medicine means life or death. There is no choice, stolen goods are returned. At the Core, it will be replaced in hours. The difference between a train robbery and a planned heist. Neither smooth, but for completely different reasons. The Train Job doesn’t show up in the Previously just to show a crime quote. The planning, the personas, the person come to spring the captured characters, the take, the final sequence.

It’s all in perspective. In what you know. Simon doesn’t just praise Jayne to the group at the end. When they are first captured, Simon tells Jayne that he appreciates Jayne’s efforts on their behalf. His efforts which got them captured.

The subtle shifts that come as the crew practice their cover words. The difference just a single word can bring to a statement. Make it silly. Incompressible. Or comfortable. Mal shifting from his medical lines into Chinese – shiny. River’s warnings that no one quite understands. Simon’s shift into confidence. St. Lucy’s is a world that he knows. Understands. He knows where he is going. What he needs.

The parallels between the two journeys through the hospital. 

Simon stops to save a man’s life. Takes charge. Takes the paddles. Asks the right questions. Knows in seconds what is wrong. Chews out that young doctor with all the nurses standing oh, so visible/invisible. I think it’s interesting that according to the Pilot that Simon attended medical school on the planet Osiris. I’ll think about Isis,  
Demeter, Persephone, Osiris, River Nile parallels at some other later time. In that scene, Simon is a fugitive. Hunted. Yet he has knowledge. He has the power to bring the dead to life. When those who belong cannot.

Mal and Zoe are also stopped by a Doctor. He is the man with the power. Clear. Paddles work both ways. Whether or not he is dead, he is stopped. Rather than hindering the journey, he enables it with his badge, which allows entry into the hospital’s pharmacological treasury.

It is also fitting that once again we have that back and forth between River and Simon. First him pushing her on the wheelchair to where she needs to go. Mapping her mind for the damage that has been done to her. Then her running. Leading Simon and Jayne through the maze of doors and corridors that lie beneath the hospital. That surreal place of screams that lies beneath what Simon knows. Leading them down so that they may go up again. I love that everyone, Jayne, Simon and River, Zoe and Mal all go down flights of stairs so that they may meet. So that they may climb up again to see once more the stars.

We’re going back to the ship. We’re almost home. 

Home. I know these are out of order, but just having seen Safe, it’s nice to reinforce that Serenity is Simon and River’s home. That he trusts Mal, correctly, and trusts Jayne, not such a good idea.

I think Mal suspects Jayne, because he’s prepared to suspect Jayne. He warns him. Once after the slashing. Twice in the transport ride over. Thrice as he explains in detail that attacking Simon and River is attacking him. Explains what that means. 

There’s no place I can be since I found Serenity

We turn back to the Pilot. Serenity and the battle fought therein. Some quotes from the Pilot script, Zoe to Simon. "In the war to unit the planets, the battle of Serenity was among the most deadly and decisive. Located on Herra, the valley was  
considered a key position by both sides and was bitterly fought over. The independent faction with sixteen brigades and 20 air tanks held Alliance forces at bay for almost two months until superior forces.....

"He (Mal) was my sergeant. Commander of 30 young grunts. ..... Three days in, there were so many officers dead, he commanded 2000! He kept us together, kept us fighting, kept us sane. By the time the fighting was over, he had maybe 400  
still intact. I said the fighting was over, but you see they left us there. Wounded as sick and as near to mad as could still walk and talk - both sides left us there while they negotiated the peace...... for a week. And we kept dying. Mercy, forgiveness,  
trust...... those are things he left back there. What he has now is the ship. The ship and us on it."

Well, that pretty much maps Mal’s universe view right there. His perspective. Mal is Prospero, exiled and abandoned. Uses the spirits of the air to punish Caliban, who in attacking his people, attacked Mal. Foolish Caliban.

And if I may say, ME fooled me. I thought Jayne was a dead man standing. Years of Joss had prepared me for the worst. Principal Flutie – eaten. Jenny Calendar – broken not to be fixed. Doyle – glowing lamb to the sacrifice. The Train Job. After  
this last week’s Buffy, I was ready for any sort of death. They fooled me. I expected death, the elder sibling of sleep. With poor betrayed River, Delirium who was once Delight in a more innocent age of the world, saging faint smoke sigils in the background.

His toe is in the sand as Jayne prepares to cross the Rubicon. His Christmas presents are denied. He got a lump of coal, don’t look in the closet. His reward denied, perhaps rambling about the take isn’t the best idea. 

Consider the speed of the turn of events at the end. Run up the stairs, into the getaway, fly to the ship, a minute of conversation, by which time Mal knows. Watching Simon burble about how Jayne was amazing and look now Simon has hope that he can help his sister. Part of Jayne’s crew. Huh. Right. Mal thinks that he might cry. Five minutes till we leave “atmo.” 

So, here’s Mal, the unit as body politic bled into him at Serenity. It’s fun to Slash, but really here in Mal’s gaze there must be this simple contrast. In danger, serene. Underneath the shy pompousness, Simon will risk all for his sister, will gamble  
everything on a code in a letter. Ducks. Pigeons. Rats. Jayne doesn’t even understand Mal’s not so coded messages. 

No wonder Mal pulls Kaylee close before he does what he must. Grounds himself. He’s barely gathered the action. Not even considered the explanation. Chosen a methodology to emphasize Jayne’s low earthiness. Unworthy of a bullet. Keel hauling. Seems Mal does know some history. Plans not to use air, but the absence of same to pull the unwanted from the body of the ship. If your eye offends you, pluck it out.

Stops when Jayne buys a clue to perception. Because until that moment, I don’t think Jayne rethought his betrayal. Even seeing what was done to River, looking at the pattern of her mind, he doesn’t understand what it means. Hustles them out twenty minutes early to the back door where the Feds are waiting. Even after he himself was betrayed, I don’t believe that he understood. Any more than the Agent saw arresting Jayne as a betrayal. The hero of Canton still not quite getting the ephemeral it.

Just as an aside, I hadn’t realized how short Simon is or perhaps it that everyone else is very tall. I wonder if it was deliberate to have so many characters in this episode tower over him. Beyond, Jayne and Mal, both the young doctor and the Agent were much taller than Simon. This is used quite nicely as in both instances Simon stands well within the taller person’s physical space and yet is clearly not the weaker one. Particularly hard to pull off with the Agent where Simon had no cards. The contrast between Jayne’s fight and Simon’s fight with the guards. With Jayne all bruised and bloodied, while Simon cuts off his opponent’s air.

Blood. Air. Water. Swimming in luminous lakes. Landing on watery ports. Flying transports like bees among the honeycomb buildings. They can’t take the sky from me. Simon peeling back the Holographic bodily systems until all that is left is the mind. Pierced with needles. Stripped. Naked and vulnerable to the world. Like Inara’s yearly exams, which as any woman understands, are cold. Only not. Colder. Darker. 

What the eye sees. The mind articulates. Perception. River remembers everything, even the things that didn’t happen. On waking from sleep, what will River see? Articulate? Perceive?


	2. Here he lies where he longed to be; - Safe

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,  
And the hunter home from the hill.  
Robert Louis Stevenson  
The woods are lovely, dark and deep  
Robert Frost 

 

Halfway through the journey of our lives, I came to myself in a dark wood and found the true way was lost.  
Dante Aligheri

All other quotes are mere wisps of memory.

Home and hunters and sailors. Wanderers on a journey between locations. Wilderness dark and bright. The space between safety and freefall. Space, the Final Frontier. No wait. Different show. Just Frontier then.

There’s a captain, some fighters, a pilot (to steer), a mechanic (to make the thing go), for some reason a preacher (a Shepherd, who are themselves wanderers), a Companion, and a Doctor and his sister. All on a transport ship, the would be voyage of the Beagle(s) and cows who forget to be when not under a sheltering sky.

And under that sky, trees. Their roots holding to the earth. Their branches yearning towards the sun. Balls of mud spinning and dancing in the dark/light round gaseous balls of fire. Fire. Post hole diggers for digging holes for flaming posts, fences, walls, post and lintel homes (a style used in early pioneer communities because nails were expensive and hard to come by. Think pioneer IKEA). I’d say cattle corals, but in this instance, I’d say not. Fire bad. Fire pretty. Light, life and some of the most artfully arranged cow piles that I have ever seen. Earth waiting to be.

I don’t know if anyone here (ah, the ephemeral here of net space) has ever danced a polka. It’s one of my favorite dances. It’s kind of hard to explain without a demonstration. Basically, you gallop two steps in one direction (your partner doing the opposite). Then you gallop two steps in the other direction. As you gallop, you spin. Here is where science makes it cool. Since your partner is providing an equal and opposite counterbalance and because you’re spending half your time in the air in mid leap, centrifugal force makes you spin faster than the amount of energy either of you is putting into it. Or at least it feels that way. Pseudo science then.

Now just for precession, the music in the Safe dance scene is a reel, not a polka. However, the couples are wearing boots, so I couldn’t really tell if they were doing polka steps (a running step - toe heel) or reel steps (a walking step - heel toe). However, I stand by my metaphor.

BTW - in ballroom dancing, to dance at home is when two dancers dance in the home/starting position, either by dancing around each other or by dancing short forward or backwards steps. When you dance out of the starting position, you leave home behind.

From a dusty frontier town street, Simon follows his sister down a dark confusing alley/tunnel, to emerge into an idyllic meadow. A tree is decorated with a white and yellow sun shaped canopy and strung with wicker rings and balls. The dance floor is decorated with gold foil shaped into sun beams, which divide the dance space. Now I’ll admit, I prefer the new Firefly Intro a bit better, however, in this instance the original metaphor of millions of planets in a solar system works better. Dancers moving both below (the canopy) and above (the floor decoration) the sun. Spinning and jigging amid the wicker spheres and circles, planets.

The dance is an interesting contrast to last week’s slower set dances and waltzing. The dancers spin in what appears to be joyous chaos, couples forming and parting. Moving to their own steps. Joining into new couples. Although, at a guess there are set patterns, you just have to know them to quantify them.

No matter, the flavor of the dancing was very different and if I may say, it was very prescient of Simon to provide his sister with tap pants for those high kicks. Then again, he has been caring for her for months now.

Months of following her around like a frantic mother hen with one chick. Dress her like a doll. Make sure she’s fed. Try to find out what’s wrong. Fail. Try to keep her away from sharp objects and dirt and safe and well. Running towards nowhere.

Until I saw this episode, I hadn’t really grasped what he has given up. Yeah, yeah, fancy life style, comfort, etc. Parents who’d always supported him in his dream to be a doctor. Now, he is a surgeon with a very limited client base. Sure they keep call him the Doctor, but I hadn’t really thought about what that meant. Years of Star Trek, teaching me that of course a ship has a doctor, had inured me to the fact that Serenity has a very small crew. Okay, they get injured quite a bit, but for Simon to go from a fast track surgeon at a large hospital, helping and healing, to a man with basically one patient, his sister, is not just a loss of career. It’s a loss of calling. That his one patient is the one that he can’t heal despite a lifetime, eleven years at least, of study, can only add to the loss.

So, young Simon follows his faery touched/tortured sister down the tunnel. Birth order is now reversed. Into the light of the sun. Into a festival celebrating the sun. Whirling dancing celebrating life intercut with a battle decorated with flung lead. River swings into the steps and Simon smiles and relaxes. Is it just me, or do we only get that smile from Simon when his sister is happy? Is it just me, or did anyone else think that River would fall into the tree and violate some sort of taboo? I said I watched Star Trek.

But Shepherd is shot and River stops and the dance goes on around her. When the men threw the bag over Simon’s head, I thought oh, it isn’t STNG, Wesley walks on grass, it’s the Wicker Man. Simon’s going to be sacrificed to insure a good harvest.

No neither.

It’s a walk in the woods. However, this is not a story of travelers mislead by willow wisps and unearthly music who emerge into strange and mystic lands where Alliance troops ride dinosaurs and cattle are fed milk and grain by beautiful women. A place where Angels magically cure mute little girls within the space of minutes. It’s just a small hill town. A hill town that needs a doctor.

Now, okay they kidnapped Simon, etc., but for a moment it’s possible to think that the teacher is right. Theoretically it is the sort of place that they should be seeking. Small community. Unlikely to have Alliance visitors. Simon and his sister will have a house. Again theoretically, the townsfolk are close knit. Will look after their own. Will be able to help look after River. Simon has a valuable service to provide. A calling that he will be able to fulfill in a town. More valuable than mere money. His coin is life. Pull back the window shades, roll up his sleeves, let the light in.

Good place for a home. The place where you have roots. The place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Riley said it. Buffy said. Technically Robert Frost said it. Home. A word that comes around and turns.

Shepherd says it’s good to be home when he gets back to the Serenity. The teacher insists that a journey ends in a home. Simon denies that the hill town can be his home, but can’t say where his home is. River says that daddy will be coming to take them home. Father Tam speaks of home when drawing a line in the sand with Simon. Sister or home? Simon’s choice. Father won’t come back for him. Won’t take him in.

Was anyone else surprise that Simon and River’s parents are alive? While on one hand, they join the legion of bad parents in the Jossverse, (throw in Ruby’s mother for good measure) their presence is necessary. Showing rather than telling. Young Simon is to be a brilliant doctor. To that end mom and dad want him to have the best. River’s question about when she’ll get a dedicated box gets brushed aside. “Many years.” Dad looks at Simon, “You’re worth it.” then glances briefly at River. I wonder just what their parents know.

The body language in this episode was fascinating. If Simon and River were a touch more, it would be incest. As it is, they are closer than twins. Twinning, following, circling for support. I wonder that Kaylee can’t see that Simon only has eyes for his prone to wandering trouble sister. Then again, perhaps Kaylee is so filled with longing to see a swan that she cannot see the duck.

Then again Simon or for that matter none of the crew appear to have quite grasped (in that they don’t seem to talk about it) that River isn’t just disturbed. She’s reading minds. Perhaps, the fact that she is broken obscures that she is unquantifiable. Simon at least has the excuse that he sees with the eyeballs of love.

The scene with the berries, shift and River moves into dancing lead position. As her brother works, River takes on the role of the caretaker by picking berries, i.e. food, for her brother. The reversal is further emphasized by Simon kneeling in front of River as she pours the berries from her skirt into the bowl. At which point, River fairly lucidly expresses her emotional and intellectual understanding of what has happened. He comforts her. She feeds him another berry. It’s a comfortable enough moment for her to play a practical joke.

“Eat, sleep and eat.” We eat to live. As River so rightly points out, she and Simon will have to resort to cannibalism to survive now that they’ve been cut off by Alliance forces. We also eat for other reasons, since Kaylee finds handsome Simon worth devouring. Skinning rabbits, tender beef cows fed on milk and hay three times a day, processed meat, father called away from the dinner table, berries, chow is in 10 minutes. Perhaps the writer was hungry. Perhaps the writer cut him/herself (?) while cooking. Bleeding ears, blood draining from the body, sanguine, Shepherd.

Perhaps it’s the caffeine seeing things. Then again, when River says that their “daddy” is coming for them, I don’t think she’s talking about their father by blood.

Then we come to the scene with the post, that once I suppose was a rooted reaching tree.

River tied and at the highest level. Simon climbing the steps to stand next to her. He turns into her and closes his eyes. She looks up and closes hers. Simon appears to have given up. This isn’t a, “Curse the heavens, if she dies you’ll have to go through me first.” It’s a very quiet, “Light it.” River is more sanguine, it’s time to go.

Mom and dad, who are Big Damn Heroes, show up to take them home. With Jayne in the role of either God (on high, glowing, smites people) or oh, I don’t know Jayne gets all the best lines, let’s leave it at that. Again, consider the body language here. Mal and Zoe walk through the crowd, which parts, climb up while Simon climbs down. Some chit chat. Zoe and Mal turn to face the crowd. Jayne hovering (he really likes that harness doesn’t he) from the bright, rumbling, looming mass that is their ship.

Serenity. A state of mind. “She’s our witch.” “You’re on my crew.” Home, the word that Mal doesn’t say, but Simon understands. Then it’s time for dinner. Not a dinner of interrupted unwelcome calls, but of the group. Simon and River sit on opposite sides of the table, and not only is bread broken, but River steals Jayne’s bread.

So, with apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, because after all that is his epitaph, which would be a creepifying way to end,

Home is the wanderer, gathered to the feast.  
and the dancer at home in mid-step.


	3. How Shan Yu Missed the Point and other Stories, Firefly, War Stories

You know I’d start with a poem, but my Titus Andronicus isn’t quite what it should be.  
Knowing yourself. How others know you. Gosh, didn’t I just write something something something for the last BtVS episode  
on this score. Of course. Always.

A story. A curling slashing line of black ink dividing waiting paper. The journey through time of individuals. The line. The  
dimensionality, the 3-D rise and fall and rise and rise of it, is how those individuals respond to what occurs. In a great story, the  
dimensions deepen and shade the more we learn of the past. The more the past fills in with the future. The more we peel away  
at River’s Russian doll drawings to get to the real you.

Because I suppose the other yous were fake. Or not. Perhaps, as I always argue they are aspects of the whole. Some being  
affectations like a black mustache. All the better to twirl while doing crime. 

Mal’s easy smile hiding the mad determination to protect his people. The preacher with his secrets. The Companion. Even as  
she complimented the Councilor, I wondered, is Innara a reliable narrator? Is she just saying what the Councilor wants to hear?  
Needs to hear, so the Councilor can be herself. Relaxed. Or is Innara revealing an essential truth? Letting down a barrier a  
little. Perhaps it’s both. Revealing in order to conceal. 

Wandering the boards, it’s interesting to see some of frofragh about Innara and the Councilor. Good idea versus Suicidal  
storytelling. Fresne pivots to the left and says, contextually irrelevant. That’s not part of my analysis. To my mind, the scene is  
there because it is directly relevant to the theme of the episode and is in direct opposition to Niska’s argument. Connection  
coming not through adversity/experience inflicted, but adversity/experience shared. Mal and Zoe are comfortable together  
because she trust him. They have a history together. Together they went to gaze into the volcano. And they came back to tell  
the tale.

When you are with people who know, who share some common thing, like being a woman, or a man, or a sharing a history, or  
whatever, barriers can drop. All of a sudden, certain things don’t have to be explained. 

At opposite ends, we have two people looking for true natures. Niksa, who tortures with a smile. People in their place.  
Business running smoothly. Gazing from across the abyss, River attempts to stand. River, who was tortured. Stripped of her  
barriers. Chaos floods in.

It seems to me that if two men go to the lip of a volcano. The one being pushed into the flames learns just as much as the man  
doing the pushing. Or better yet, the Cask of Amontillado. In that moment of being bricked into the wall, Fortunato learns far  
more about Montressor than all of his previous years of knowing. In torturing those who cross him, Niska mimes at desiring to  
know his victim’s true nature, but what he’s really attempting to define is his own. 

See me. I am the monster than men fear. I am great. I am powerful. 

River wants to be a girl, but never will be again. For awhile each day, the sun that she danced under in Safe comes out, but then  
the sun grows dark and the chaos is come again. Like apples that carry death, the fruit comes up in bits. She is fortunate at  
least that she has a brother to trust. Who will always see her as his beautiful Mei Mei. Throw up on his bed and it’s only  
confirmation. Yup, that’s his sister. It’s there in her smile. Even if she does not know herself, Simon will know her. Know the  
girl that she was. Will love the person that that girl has become.

So many people have seen so many things in River’s repetition of Kayee’s line. To me her smile was shy. As if to say, I’ve  
revealed a little bit of myself to you. The hidden part that isn’t trees and unicorns and rainbows. Do you still love me? Sadly at  
this point, Kaylee and River’s relationship is superficial. Two laughing girls. Kaylee, of all of them, has the least experience with  
the bitter taste of tainted fruit. I bet he brings her flowers. A dreamer is our Kaylee. However, she had the misfortune to leave  
her world and take up ship into the Jossverse. Where things rarely stay shiny.

In upcoming episodes, we’ll see how Kaylee deals with her new self knowledge. Her knowledge of previously held  
conceptions of others. Will she judge herself for failing to live up to some previously held ideal of self? Will she be able to adjust  
to her know vision of River, this slight damaged girl? How will it affect how she relates to Simon? All I can be sure of in a Joss  
story is that things will change.

Then we have so recently betraying Jayne, giving his crewmates fruit. So, unexpected a gesture that it causes unease rather than  
any sort of connection. Then again it’s a guilt thing. More usefully real when he joins the group to rescue the Captain. Their  
Captain, my Captain. (yes, I do realize the irony of the quote). Contrasted to the repetition of Jayne alone in his bunk. Yes, it’s  
crude and fairly funny, but also essentially sad. For some reason the whole heading for this bunk, Jayne get your gun sequence  
makes me think of that scene in Grosse Pointe Blanke where the main character looks at himself in the mirror, loads his gun and  
says, “This is me breathing.” Not sure why, so we’ll resolve with Zoe and Wash.

There are a couple of points where Zoe and Wash fail to connect in the episode. Her lie about her opinion of Wash’s idea. His  
incomprehension of Zoe and Mal’s bond. Barriers that wear away a bit as the episode progresses.

Wash both looses a little shiny-ness in this episode and comes to new level of understanding of his wife. Of Mal. Of war  
stories. Of himself. That he is one of those who does not leave anyone behind. Part of unisex suicide team. Zoe and Wash  
showing each other that they can be trusted. Making their own history. That they are a suicide team that will be in their bunk  
thank you very much.


	4. Stream of Firefly - Objects in Space

Objects may be something something something

What we have meant to say is that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things which we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them as being, nor their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.  
\- Immanual Kant, Critique of Pure Reason  
The world dreams itself and the sun rises to create a new day.  
The sun and the water play upon the back of rainbow serpent, our sister, in whose dream we dwell.  
\- me, about 10 years ago. 

Yup, here I am. Jubal Early as he spins in the dark corner of no and where.

She’s always been very intuitive. Simon’s favorite adjective to explains his mei mei’s leaps of how the holy heck did she know that.

Am I dreaming?  
We all are. Mal and River/Serenity, in whose dream he dwells.  
\- Joss Whedon, Objects in Space

In every episode, I see the rainbow serpent dropping sticks and stones, shifting genders and realities, creating this place, this world. This home where outcasts dwell.

Perhaps, what got me to thinking about rainbow serpents was the opening scene in OiS. We pan through the ship to focus on a honey comb grid, to focus on the dreamer, River. She understands the images, but cannot comprehend their symbolic meaning. Rainbow serpents, who are associated with water and rain and flood, often devour honeycombs and bees in stories. Okay, and the occasional village, which I suppose is the part where we hope that River puts soup in her hair and does not destroy the ship.

Perhaps, it’s because I’m thinking of elemental things at the moment. Burning the earth. Boiling the sea. You can’t take the sky from me. Fire. Earth. Water. Air. The Black. The sound of the sea as Wash and Zoe loose themselves in blind seeking. Inara stripped of her paint surrounded by sweeping winding cloth. River, who can melt away.

I must briefly here gush. Joss is a god. The use of view. Abupt cuts. Pan and curve through ship and tunnel. Peel away the layers of Serenity’s body. Show her beating spinning heart. The rooms where she shelters her crew. The wide womb where she carries her cargo. Filled with gold leaves in the outline of autumn trees. The sound of wind like a sigh. Sigh.

River’s hair and face coming into view with her arched pointed feet. (Think about bending at the waist versus the knees for a moment.) Feet that seek Braille meaning from the surface that she walks. It’s why that snapped twig is so startling. Feet that sensitive shouldn’t be able to break the surface of snow much less a twig. The wonderful juxtaposition of Jubal Early, like a mosquito listening from the ship’s skin, River’s balanced yearning up from below. Each with the same object. Hearing. Understanding. Imbuing words with meaning by listening.

Although, Jubal clearly needs to work on his active listening skills. A lion. Alliance. Crawling inside Serenity, invading the safety of her spaces. Like getting car jacked when driving 80 miles an hour. Unexpected to say the least. When safe and alone, instead vulnerable. His statement threat to Kaylee, surely the Willow of the series, was chilling, “Have you ever been raped?” And the evening started so well. 

You know as the crew was speculating about River (Psychic. Assassin. Psychic assassin), I began to think that these dreams are not big enough. I’m inclined to agree with Scroll’s theory of River as goddess. 

If River is a goddess, then she is one who is all kinds of chimeric. I’m leaning more towards Delirium who was once Delight in a more innocent age of the world, than the triumvir of goddesses. But that’s just me. River. Fragile, like Serenity’s heart. Serenity, that is her home more than any other.

Perhaps, River does not actually possess the ability to melt into the ship, to become both a symbol of Serenity as a place of balance on thin rails and a horrific battlefield. However, her initial dream walking drift shows that she has reason to fear melting away. No one sees her walk. Only in sudden shifts into their confusing hidden selves. 

Jayne is easy enough to interpret, but what of Book. I’m also fairly intrigued by Book and Jayne’s bonding. What exactly is going on there? Will I ever know? Will I ever get to give meaning to the text with my understanding? How frustrating that just as the layers start to pile, my show begins to slide from view. 

Okay, I’m better now.

Simon’s comment was a nice touch of texture. From our perspectives, we can see that any regret that he has over a lost life in no way negates his choice. Cause come on, Simon is the best brother ever. No. Really. It is however nice to see some repetition of the price. Not just the running and the hiding, but the loss of that innocent self. Naked. Drunk. The world at his feet. Making obscene amounts of money. Making a difference. 

“I’d be there right now if she hadn’t….” If she hadn’t what? Been tortured? Gone away in the first place? Written him?

Actually, I have to wonder if his insistence that River is just a girl isn’t his way of trying to hold onto the memory, the image of their undamaged, wholly triumphal selves. The world existing to be won. It’s a wound that’s still scabbing over.

Mal, on the other hand, is well and truly scarred thick. “None of it matters a damn.” At turns calm, ragging and weary. It’s hard to be the king (here I really must pimp bonibaru’s vid for OoG, it’s absolutely stunning). Hard when your subjects betray you, don’t tell you the everything of what’s going on. When choices must be made not based on liking or pity, but for the good of the kingdom. Such a tiny kingdom in space. Floating. Moving. Seeking its own calm meaning. No touching. No guns. Instead of shooting Early, Mal flings Early from Serenity’s skin. Casts him out. It’s not quite the fate that he threatened Jayne with, but it’s not far off. Turns to accept River back to Serenity in a smooth fall.

For such a literal show, after all it’s not metaphor drenched Buffy, Firefly is incredibly rich on so many levels. Go West young man. To the land of youth, the rising sun, the land of the dead. Mostly we gnaw on it, but Science Fiction’s appropriation of the symbolism of the Western intrigues and teases me. Although Buffy and Angel take place somewhere between the fountain of youth and the city of gold, Firefly seems to play with the dream (nightmare and pleasant) of America. Makes me think of the American Scream Arc in the comic series Shade the Changing Man (Mad, Mod, Poet God). There’s no way to really describe the series (our hero Shade spent one issue as a road, because he was feeling depressed) in terms of the real, other than to say our hero has been touched by insanity and everything in the series is touched by that madness. By the madness that is the world.

At the end, we see River playing jacks. A child’s game. She’s just a girl. Giggling with Kaylee about sex. Just a teenage girl. She says, “I can win this.” I don’t believe that she is referring to the game. I think she’s referring to the ball, the globe, the world, comprehension, meaning, function.

Or maybe she’s just dreaming it all.


	5. Piles of Leaves - Serenity

At last the premier cometh...

Picture this. Women sitting on a hardwood dance floor between mad swirling dance sets. Their hoop skirts pooled around them  
in multi colored hues of silk and brocade.  
And as they gently fan themselves with fragile bits of cloth and wood, the conversation turns as it always does to Joss. My  
housemate and I, in our incarnation as the Danger Twins, have long sought that mythic and fabled device, The Minionator,  
patent pending. Capable of turning all and sundry into our helpless minions. Mwa ha, ha, ha. Te he he. Ahem…

And as I sat there in our little tableau, I realized that Joss has already invented it. It’s embedded somewhere in Buffy and Angel  
and Firefly. I have been minionated, which explains why in this busy holiday season, my incessant desire to talk about the  
Master Joss and his works. It’s what drove me to write Fox. To write UPN – please buy the Master’s orphan child a home.  
To fill in the demographic survey at fireflysupport.com To fill in just plain petitions and write my UPN affiliate and and and…at  
this point it was important to pause, my corset’s busk was twisted and torturing. I learned a valuable lesson Saturday. Don’t  
drive while wearing a corset. They just aren’t made for it. Actually, it was a lesson that I already knew, but speaking of lessons  
that you have to learn and relearn in the course of a lifetime.

Fox, Fox, Fox…what can I say that others have not said in more succinct Anglo Saxon that I can achieve. That I didn’t say  
myself on Friday as a few of us gathered to watch the first. The last. The elegant. Why did Fox choose not to air Serenity as the  
pilot? Heck why did CBS decide to pass on that little show called Star Trek? I know they had Lost in Space, but come on.  
Why did NBC decide not to show the Cage or Where No Man Has Gone Before and instead aired The Man Trap as Star  
Trek’s pilot episode? Why do networks do the things they do?

When I was a child my mother and I had a joke. Well, not so much a joke as a knowledge. If we liked a show, it was sure to  
be canceled. While the terrible shows ruled the earth like great and annoying dinosaurs. In bland places called this Land.  
Inevitable in their plodding betrayal.

Alas, poor Firefly, I…haven’t given up on you yet. What kind of minion would I be if I did? However, it’s a sad thing when  
you realize that your Master is himself at the whim of blind gods and outrageous fortunes.

And yet after such a premiere. Such a finale. Such a mid point.

I mourn that I couldn’t come to this episode unspoiled. Not by spoilers. I read one scene that didn’t make it into the final cut  
and the t.v. guide description. No big. 

No, I mean unspoiled by the series itself. Simon was genuinely creepy in that first seen moment. Actually, in context, Mal’s  
accusations to Simon are very interesting. That Simon killed his parents for their money. By this point, we know the reverse  
being virtually true. That Simon is planning on selling this naked frozen girl into prostitution. Ummm…no. Or perhaps it’s love.  
Well, yeah, but not the way you think. But why would Mal think it? He doesn’t believe in people. He is a mean old man.

Old. An odd description. Mal isn’t old. Except where it counts. He is crazy and psychotic and old. Withered. His spiritual  
garden has shrunk and only fierce plants grow there. Book on the other hand is aiming for some spiritual youngness. He denies  
the title grandpa, he never married. Never had children. A Shepherd, but not a father. Thought his clothes should give his nature  
away. Contrast his first and second reactions to being called grandpa. And at the opposite end of the spectrum we have (little)  
Lord Fauntleroy. Simon as a boy. Inara calls him a boy. Mal calls him a boy. Kaylee thinks he’s very young to be a surgeon. 

Which doesn’t mean that Simon doesn’t have his scary. The moment when he decided not to help Kaylee. The boy made his  
choice. It’s one thing to know that he would fight to protect River from bounty hunters and officers of the law. But Kaylee.  
Dear sweet, fuzzy bears sewn onto her overalls crushing Kaylee. That’s the bitter point of resolve seen in Simon’s eyes. Having  
turned from family, friends, home, he makes a simple choice not to help. Against everything that being a doctor must mean for  
him. And to have, even for an un-real moment, such consequences. Kaylee dead. Joss is a cruel Master. Capricious. For a  
moment, even though I knew better, he sucked me in. Perhaps, I worship the god of Rat Bastards. Ours is a special level of  
hell, with hot tubs.

Without exploding into supernova, I’m not quite sure how to hit all of the things that interested, the shadings, the textures.  
However, I will attempt it. Ivan, River, Mal, the Reevers aren’t the only ones who are crazy. Perhaps, it’s a side effect of The  
Minionator, patent pending.

River went to school at age fourteen. How Slayer young. Wrote her brother. Insert the scene where he confronted their  
parents. From there, two years by and by. Imagine Simon earning obscene amounts of money. Focusing on something he could  
do. Saving lives. Home is the hospital. The fearless fool venturing into blacked out areas of the world of Osiris, Lord of the  
Dead. Seeking the path to his lost sister. I’m fascinated by the role reversals inherent in this brother sister pair. Simon as life  
bringer, care giver. River as, whatever it is that River is. Weapon. Goddess. Broken and lost.

Osiris locked in his box, frozen in that sleep of death. Washed by the lapping river Nile. Waiting for his sister, his wife, to wake  
him. To put his jigsawed broken apart life back together again. Waiting for Isis who searches and searches. As Demeter  
searched and searched for her stolen daughter Persephone. Letting the harvest and the hearth grow cold. Strawberries and fruit  
and grain ungrown. The earth dead in long winter.

Two years. Twice the traditional year and a day. River, who wrote her brother, and waited and waited. Gave up on waiting.  
Didn’t think he’d come for her. Gave up on the dream of Horus swooping down in rescue. 

As Mal gave up. My God, the simple sweetness of that kiss of the cross. Mal had faith. He believed. Had hope. Held his  
troops together. Shot down that enemy ship. Believed that the sound that he heard was “their” angels coming to send the  
Alliance to the hot place. No wonder he wants no part of God or Shepherd’s faith. It is not that Mal does not believe that God  
exists. It’s worse than that. God chose Jacob and not Esau. Let the Alliance scorch the earth and boil the sea. Mal’s faith is  
broken. None of it matters now. How unutterably sad.

Denied heaven, Mal is trying to pull a limping Lucifer’s trick. Hoping to be alone in their section of the sky, grown crowded  
with ships and sharks. He isn’t a sergeant. He’s a feudal king. Ruling his ship rather than serving. That’s not us, not ever.  
Serenity is not a democracy. Don’t ever tell him what to do.

After WS, I wanted to parallel Mal and River, what with the torture and all, but now the impulse is stronger still. I want more  
data. Things that are broken apart are never quite the same. Osiris rules the dead because he is dead. Persephone eternally  
cycles into the earth. 

Of course, a key difference is that River is a dummy. After all hope was lost, the top 3% Fool had a bit of luck. Simon said that  
he was lucky. Mal said that luck leaves you stranded. Maybe not. Simon may not be good with people, well he’s never had to  
be, he’s a trauma surgeon. His patients are unconscious. However, he is very lucky. And so very pretty. Look at that jaw take  
a hit. And another. And another.

And just how much money did he give that underground movement? No wonder he came up with that plan in Ariel. Reflecting  
back on that childhood scene in Safe, I wonder if in the Tam household everything came with a price. We’ll give you a better  
tech device, but you have to be the best doctor ever. As opposed to River, who was not just gifted, she was a gift.

The sheer complexity of the interactions laid out in Serenity have me in awe. See Jayne. See Jayne simmer. Jayne seems simple.  
Jayne isn’t. 

Jayne, Jayne, Jayne. He makes me think of a little boy who attempts to show the little girl that he likes her by throwing dirt  
clods at her. Shut up, keep up, follow up. Jayne, who turned on his former comrades for a bigger cut. 10% of getting by. The  
captain slaps him down, the fraught aiming at Mal’s head during the goods exchange with Patience, the offer from the law. I  
agree that Jayne wouldn’t turn on his captain, but I wonder if either he or Mal know it. He somewhat makes me think of  
Bothari from the Vorkosigan books in that strange complexity. Except you know, not so much with the insane. 

Jayne sure seems to peer in windows a lot. Crouched nearly fetal, watching Simon operate on Kaylee. Watching Book be  
operated on. Pleading with Mal not to tell the others what he did. On the outside looking in. Not even knowing why. 

Wash and Zoe and Mal. The first rumblings of Wash not getting the whole veterans thing. Wash and Jayne snipping at each  
other. Dinosaur’s ruling the Land. In hindsight, the T-rex’s inevitable betrayal is quite the foreshadowing. Wonder if I’d even  
would have noticed it if I hadn’t seen Ariel first. No I’m not bitter. Where was I?

Oh, Book. That’s it, Book is Brother Cadfael and that’s all there is to it. Warrior, who saw and did too much. Withdrew to his  
abbey to try the other thing. Gardening. Growing things. Fresh food. Growing faith. However, serenity in isolation is easy. Now  
he’s on walkabout. Two days out in the world and he’s amid thieves with a pit stop at iniquity. Hellfire and Lepers. Crazy Ivans  
and Reevers. No wonder he feels that he’s on the wrong ship. How fragile he must find his faith. He couldn’t even protect one  
man. Couldn’t make himself really want to do so. No wonder his platitudes come out like platitudes, he’s as lost as everyone  
else. 

Reevers. Nicely done. Using something that H.P. Lovecraft used to good affect. The fearful thing as virtually unseen.  
Inexplicable. Unknowable. The seeing of which drives the sane mad. The description coming not from the seeing, but from the  
reactions of the characters. Jayne loading a single shotgun shell. Inara pulling out a suicide needle. 

Yes, I’m in the suicide needle camp. Mainly because it adds further texture to the why the heck is Inara out there. I want to  
re-watch and examine those jump cuts within the scene with her young client as they discussed why anyone would leave home.  
A home where she grew up, not necessarily where she was trained. How she avoids a straight answer. However, other than a  
sorrowing Madonna/Magdalene visage, I’m not sure what re-watching could tell me. I can already see that Inara has some  
secret wound that is still bleeding. 

Let’s review. We have seen her with four clients. Two were sons of wealth. One an annoying dilettante. One person with a  
definite job, the only woman. I wonder if Inara chooses clients based on people that she won’t connect to with into. Travels on  
a ship where the captain constantly reminds her of her status. Ridicules and strangely differentiates. The job he abhors. The  
woman he likes. 

Then there’s her reaction to Simon and River. Threatening to leave Serenity if Mal casts them out. Knowing as we do that Inara  
loves Serenity, I wonder what line in Inara’s mental sand covers lost babes in the woods. There in her temple of lush fabric, so  
different from the rest of the ship, we see her act the priestess. First we have her introduction, sex, her profession. That young  
pup who goes from asking her to stay to awkwardly insulting her. Simon, to whom she offers what medical supplies, healing  
that she can give. Book. First he brings her food, fresh fruit in offering. Cain was a farmer. A wanderer. Marked. In this  
instance, Book has better fortune. That lovely snapshot as Inara offers Book spiritual guidance, absolution. 

Underneath Inara’s soft, however, is a fighter. Compare Mal’s use of Inara’s profession to discomfit Book with Inara’s use of  
Simon’s presence, the cutting crudity of her words, to cut Mal. Pay attention to just how uncomfortable Simon is in that scene. 

And her aim is true. No wonder Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead. His kingdom is in turmoil. The goddess of the eastern gate  
is thinking of leaving. Mal wants to strike out as deep as he can. 

And I thought the characters on Buffy were messed up.

At the top of this board, there is a Joss quote. He wants to invade my dreams it seems. Invade seems the wrong word. That  
implies that I am not complicitous in this invasion. I am wholly complicitous. I sap my own walls that fall. I want dreams and  
stories that ravish the imagination. 

When a woman wears a corset the reason that her breasts are referred to as heaving is because her rib cage is so constrained  
that she has to breath up instead of out. I want to breath out. Breath in. Fly. Not because my lungs lack oxygen, but because  
the wind carries me.

Whatever happens, blind bland gods not withstanding, keep flying.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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